This the second reflection I'm writing on the wonderful insights I've been able to discover with others through Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together. In the first, I shared the important insight that to be with other Christians is an incomparable gift of God, a privilege never to be taken for granted, and a holy anticipation of the final day in which we will gather with all of God's saints in the eternal kingdom.
The Bible teaches us that the Church is the Body of Christ. We very easily take this to be wholly metaphor and have become so used to using this terminology that we fail to take into account how literal and powerful a reality this is. I remember my seminary professor Dr. Bill Mallard asking the question in a Church history class, "After the ascension, where did the body of Christ go?" Everyone was a bit puzzled. He swung his arms toward all of us and said, "Look around. It's right here."
Jesus came not as a disembodied spiritual presence. He was not a metaphor. He truly came in the flesh. And so, Jesus is experienced in the flesh in the physical presence of his people. When we look into the eyes of a Christian brother or sister, we are looking into Christ's eyes. When we embrace a fellow Christian, we are embracing Christ's physical body in a physical way.
Bonhoeffer says that we should never be ashamed to long for the physical presence of other believers. It's one thing to stay in touch with people we love in the Christian community through electronic means--Facebook, phone calls, emails, text messages are good and important and we need to connect with each other and offer Christ's love through these means. But they do not take the place of offering each other the physical presence of Jesus Christ through gathering with one another in the flesh.
We live in an electronic age. Bonhoeffer could never have anticipated a day in which Christians would stay at home and watch church on television, or listen to sermons through podcasts, or sing along with videos on Youtube, and feel as if they had been nourished in the faith. Jesus is present in the physical presence of other believers in a way we simply cannot find any other way.
For this reason, Bonhoeffer tells us that we should meet one another as we would meet Jesus--with "reverence, humility, and joy" This is a fantastic spiritual discipline. It's one that can help us to get over feeling burdened by each other, or becoming dismissive of each other, or subtly communicating arrogance or even contempt of each other. If we see Jesus in each other in a very physical way, we will honor each other and find time for each other. We will learn to listen and attend to each other. This is not an imaginative exercise. Seeing Jesus in each other is learning to recognize reality.
The other day I was thinking about my bills and got sick of my own thoughts. I was in my car, and a prayed as a pulled out of a parking lot into traffic, "God, help me not to waste my life thinking about money. Help me to see Jesus." Just then, a car pulled up beside me driven by a member of my church. I honked the horn and rolled down my window and said hello. I knew that God was speaking to me--showing me that the way I see Jesus is to see him in others.
The old fashioned practices of community life are always relevant no matter how technologically savvy we become. "The Christian in exile"--the homebound, imprisoned, missionary, hospitalized, or wandering Christian--are strengthened by physical presence or whatever we can offer to approximate it as best as we can. He describes brief visits, prayer with each other, hand written letters, worship together, fellowship at home in a Christian family (Bonhoeffer himself did not have this gift as his family were not practicing believers), and shared life of seminarians as examples of how we offer that presence. I've experiences all these forms of physical, bodily, shared fellowship and they have been the way Christ has presented himself to me in a manner impossible otherwise.
Once, I was very sick and hospitalized. My pastor friend, David Warren, drove all the way from Panama City to see me in the hospital. He could only stay fifteen minutes before he had to return to officiate a wedding. Recently, I was able to spend a day with him as he is fighting a terrible disease. I will always treasure that day. David told his wife Dian in my presence that my visit was "a gift, a wonderful gift."
The gift of our shared presence, our physical, bodily being together, is the gift of the very physical presence of Jesus himself to each other, whether we recognize it or not. May God grant us grace to recognize this gift and to offer it to each other.
This is a beautiful prayer
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